Business people need ideas: lots of them, quickly. The Bright Idea Deck, a brainstorming tool disguised as a pack of cards, provides a portable library of evocative images, symbols, keywords, and questions designed to spark associations, shift perspectives, and generate more ideas in less time.

The companion book (Creative Brainstorming with the Bright Idea Deck) teaches brainstorming techniques, provides step-by-step instructions, and includes interpretations and exploration questions for every card in the deck. This tool and these techniques became the core of creativity and brainstorming workshops I taught all over the planet between 2004 and 2010, helping businesspeople and writers tap into hundreds of their own brightest ideas.

After enjoying these benefits myself, I set out to share them in a series of books on practical applications of tarot. My “no focus on hocus pocus” approach proved popular, and these books opened the door for me to teach engaging, creative workshops all over the planet. My books have now been translated and published in more than a dozen languages.

Putting the Tarot to Work (Llewellyn) positions tarot as a visual brainstorming tool, empowering the reader to generate more than twenty new ideas in five minutes, explore challenges from unexpected angles, and anticipate issues before they disrupt work.

Taking the Tarot to Heart (Llewellyn) provides step-by-step instructions on how to use tarot to explore, identify, and repair relationship issues.

What’s in the Cards for You? (Llewellyn) provides a series of thirty experiments — performed once a day for thirty days — as a method for learning to read the cards in the way that will be most useful for you.

The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Tarot (Que) makes no assumptions about the reader’s experience with tarot cards and teaches both practical and mystical approaches to working with a tarot deck.

A Guide to Tarot Card Meanings (TarotTools Books) is the first-ever public domain tarot card dictionary, providing detailed traditional meanings, definitions of key symbols, and exploration questions for every card in the deck.

A Guide to Tarot Card Reading (TarotTools Books) provides approachable, step-by-step methods for reading cards and offers practical insights that can help anyone use tarot cards to explore options and brainstorm next steps.

Lo Scarabeo – 1997-2007 (Lo Scarabeo) The celebrated Italian publisher of tarot decks selected me to write several chapters for this illustrated history of their work.

Interested in learning more about Tarot? Some creative tools for everyone from card readers to fiction writers remain available at TarotTools.com.

]]>https://markmcelroy.com/2019/03/19/the-tarot-books/feed/0The Values Projecthttps://markmcelroy.com/2019/03/14/the-values-project/
https://markmcelroy.com/2019/03/14/the-values-project/#respondThu, 14 Mar 2019 11:47:33 +0000https://markmcelroy.com/?p=10000984Refreshing something as sacred as an organization’s values requires careful deliberation. Push too hard, and the new values feel rushed and inauthentic. On the other hand, slick, over-produced efforts can come off as propaganda.

Values make up the core of organization, telling employees “Who We Are.” As one officer said, “Values are what we hire and fire on.” And because values persist — changing them on a whim risks them coming off as a “flavor of the month” — expressing them in timeless, authentic language is critical.

To enhance the project’s authenticity, we put storytelling front and center. A listening project collected ideas, opinions, and points of view from hundreds of employees. We used a photo and video series to share employee sentiments in their own words. And to give everyone an opportunity to make the values their own, we used a six-word story project to collect simple, honest statements and celebrate them in a custom art wall.

My Contribution: I’d be out of line if I didn’t note up front that a project this massive requires consistent, long-term effort by a huge team of talented people. I was honored to serve the team as creative lead, launch event producer, scriptwriter, and writer.

]]>https://markmcelroy.com/2019/03/14/the-values-project/feed/0Arbitrary, Stupid Goalhttps://markmcelroy.com/2019/01/31/reading-notes-stupid-arbitrary-goal/
https://markmcelroy.com/2019/01/31/reading-notes-stupid-arbitrary-goal/#respondThu, 31 Jan 2019 12:53:26 +0000https://markmcelroy.com/?p=10000876Confession time: I bought Arbitrary, Stupid Goal because I thought it was a book on productivity. There it was on Kottke. There it was on Amazon. There it was in my Kindle app.

I can be forgiven for this given that the book opens with the story of the Wolfawitz family, “who wanted to go on vacation but didn’t know where.” So they came up with the idea of “a two-week road trip driving to as many towns, parks, and counties as they could that contained their last name: Wolfpoint, Wolfville, Wolf Lake, etc. They read up and found things to do on the way to these other Wolf spots: a hotel in a railroad car, an Alpine slide, a pretzel factory, etc.” In other words: they adopted an arbitrary, stupid goal.

But: “When they came back from vacation, they felt really good. It was easily the best vacation of their lives, and they wondered why. My father says it was because the Wolfawitzes stopped trying to accomplish anything. They just put a carrot in front of them and decided the carrot wasn’t the important part but chasing it was.”

So, expecting a non-fiction book by a graphic designer on the importance of just doing something — anything — to move a project forward, I found myself transported, instead, to Greenwich Village in the 1970’s and the lives of the people who work and eat in a greasy spoon called Shopsin’s. This morning, when I finished the book, I found myself homesick for a place I’ve never been and longing to visit a neighborhood that no longer exists.

The memoir borrows structure from memory itself. One phrase links to another. A gum ball machine on a counter becomes a catalyst for a story about the neighborhood womanizer. A recipe for Thai noodles gives way to memories of a heavily-drugged John Belushi curled up under a restaurant booth. If you’ve spent a happy evening ping-ponging stories with friends — the kind of conversation where the back-and-forth exchange is more important than the structure or order of the tales being told — you’ll feel right at home with the meandering, random-but-not organization of this sweet book.

Embedded in all this, there is a sort of productivity tip: life itself is a lurching, unpredictable journey from one point to the next. So, rather than drift, pick some random, stupid, arbitrary goal — an achievement to pursue, a quest that can act as a lens for refining your vision of the world, a person to love — and, just like that, meaning emerges from the chaos.

Highlights and Lessons Learned

I admire this book’s honest, unembellished tone. Everything about the text, from the author’s vocabulary to the structure of each story, feels spontaneous and organic. There’s no pretense intended; every moment recounted here feels as unpracticed as a conversation with a friend.

As a writer, of course, I know there’s a lot of work behind prose that doesn’t feel like a lot of work. It’s good to be reminded, though, of the power of evident simplicity.

Me, holding one of my own Abritrary Stupid Goals. (Photo Credit: John Hannula)

That archetypal pie came from Pasquale’s Pizza Restaurant in the Lenlock Shopping Center in Anniston, Alabama. You’ve never been there, but you know the place. A dining room with wide, black booths around the perimeter and wrought-iron tables and chairs in the middle. Red and white vinyl tablecloths. Bulbous glass shakers of pepper flakes and powered cheese.

My first pizza featured a film of melted mozzarella, a stingy smear of red sauce, and a pale, thin crust with the texture and flavor of under-toasted Wonderbread. Pulling the cheese away revealed a crustal landscape of steaming hills and craters pooled with orange grease. Listed on the menu as “Small/Plain,” it was as wide as a dollar bill and cost forty cents.

We lived in one town and went to church in another. (Long story.) Our route to the Weaver Church of Christ took us right past the Lenlock Shopping Center, the home of Pasquale’s.

Pasquale’s Pizza Restaurant in the Lenlock Shopping Center. After it closed, the space would become a laundry, a florist, and a gift shop before finally being torn down and lost to time.

Especially on Sunday nights, when my parents were worn down by Sunday School, many prayers, the morning sermon, an early afternoon singing, a late afternoon youth class, and the evening sermon, I would campaign to stop for pizza.

I rarely won. We lived simply. Jack’s Hamburgers or Goal Post barbecue sandwiches were rare and exotic treats. Mom cooked almost every meal at home.

One night, though, when I was seven, Mom gave in and sent me inside with one dollar to get two six-inch small, plain pies: one for me and one for my brother. I felt so big, ordering and paying for my own meal.

While I waited, I came across a coffee can on the counter. Taped to the outside was the photo of a sickly-looking boy with large, sad eyes. The accompanying note, scrawled with a blue Bic pen, explained Billy suffered from an exotic disease. Medical bills exceeded what Billy’s family could pay. Any help would be appreciated.

When the elderly woman behind the counter delivered my pizza — on a warm paper plate, cocooned in a white paper sack — I paid for it and received a small fortune in change. Without hesitation, I dropped the coins in the coffee can.

My favorite page of the paper: the Pasquale’s ad in the Anniston Star.

“You’re a good boy,” the woman behind the counter said. “You think of others.” Beaming, I ran back out to climb in the passenger seat of my mother’s metallic gold Ford Gran Torino.

“Where’s your brother’s pizza?” my mother demanded.

I blinked. I had ordered just one pie. “I forgot.”

Mother frowned. “Where’s my change?”

“There’s this boy and he’s sick and he has a can on the counter—“

Mother would have none of it. “You wasted sixty cents.”

“I was thinking of others.”

“You forgot your own brother!”

The rest of the way home, no one spoke. When we arrived, the paper sack and the plate inside were spotted with grease. My brother and I shared the single six-inch pie: two lukewarm slices, three delicious inches apiece.

My nephew, Walter, pinching a pizza in Paris.

2. The Toxic Treat the Beggars Eat

I ate my first “small/plain” slice in 1969. That momentous day came either two hundred years … or three thousand years … after pizza was invented.

We can’t be more precise than that, because pizza is essentially toast with toppings, and that very simplicity complicates efforts to pin down pizza’s pedigree. Twenty-eight hundred years ago, Persian soldiers used their concave shields as solar ovens to bake flatbreads topped with dates and cheese. The Greeks noshed on open-faced sandwiches layered with cheese, garlic, and onions. The Romans snacked on re-heated matzah crackers sprinkled with cheese and drizzled with olive oil.

Today, upscale pizzerias sell similar “artisanal pies” to deep-pocketed diners for thirty bucks a plate. As recently as the 1800’s, though, pizzas were eaten exclusively by the poor. Nearly-rotten vegetables, fatty meats, and day-old fish became more palatable when scattered on flatbread, smothered with cheap local cheese, and baked at high heat.

Pizza’s association with poverty is also how tomatoes and tomato paste found their way onto pies. After explorers imported tomatoes from the Americas, a mystery emerged: wealthy people who ate tomatoes sickened and died. But as detectives on CSI: Naples discovered, the cause of death had less to do with toxic tomatoes and more to do with being well-to-do. Acidic tomatoes leached lethal levels of lead from the pewter plates favored by Italy’s aristocracy.

The news came too late, though, to save the tomato. The bright red fruit had gained a reputation for being poisonous — except in the slums, where commoners, eating off wooden plates, consumed them without consequence. With time, tomatoes — sliced, crushed, or cooked — found their way onto the pizzas of the poor.

Ads for the first pizzas, then, might have featured the jingle “The toxic treat that beggars eat.” Yelp reviews like this one, penned by none other than Carol Collodi, the author of Pinocchio, didn’t help:

Pizza looks like a patchwork of greasy filth that harmonizes perfectly with the appearance of the person selling it.

Carol Collodi

“Pizza is made from a dense dough that does not cook, and is loaded with almost raw tomato, garlic, pepper, and oregano … (The pizza maker) cuts them into so many slices worth one soldo each, and gives them to a boy who goes off to sell them from a portable table at some street corner.

“The boy will stay there almost all day, while his pizza slices freeze in the cold or turn yellow in the sun as the flies eat them … The black of the toasted bread, the sickly white of the garlic and anchovy, the greeny-yellow of the oil and fried greens, and the bits of red here and there from the tomato — they make pizza look like a patchwork of greasy filth that harmonizes perfectly with the appearance of the person selling it.”

Given this pitiful pedigree, how did pizza evolve into a delicacy made with heirloom tomatoes, truffle oil, and cruelty-free pepperoni? According to the Italians, the shift in this humble pie’s reputation came about thanks to the King of Savoy, the Queen of Clean, and the world’s first pizza buffet.

A plaque commemorating either the 100th anniversary of the margherita pizza or, perhaps, the first viral marketing campaign.

3. A Questionable Claim to Fame

In Naples, the Pizzeria Brandi displays an 1889 letter from the royal “Inspection Office of the Mouth” (seriously!), confirming the Queen of Italy praised the excellence of the restaurant’s pizzas. Tour guides cite the letter when pinpointing Naples as the birthplace of the modern pizza. Their stories vary, but have three things in common:

Umberto of Savoy, king of Italy, summons Raffaele Esposito, the most famous pizzolio in Naples, to prepare his very best pies for the queen.

Of the three pies Raffaele creates, Queen Margherita declares the one with tomatoes, cheese, and basil her favorite, as these ingredients embody the red, white, and green of the Italian flag.

Raffaele names this pie the “margherita pizza” in honor of the queen.

The letter looks very official. And history confirms Queen Margherita visited Naples in 1889. But the facts cited by this origin story have been pounded, kneaded, and stretched a bit.

King Umberto, accompanied by his mustache.

Umberto Ranieri Carlo Emanuele Giovanni Maria Ferdinando Eugenio, also known as King Umberto the First of Savoy, was a short fellow with a long name. His glossy hair and regal forehead were his best features, but his good looks ended at the eyebrows. His bulging eyes gave him a startled expression. His ears rode low on his tiny head. To make matters worse, he sported a comically large mustache, so thick and wide it looks like a fruit bat roosted beneath his sharp little nose.

Queen Margherita, who, perhaps, looks a bit sad for good reason.

Joining him in Naples was Margherita Maria Teresa Giovanna. Margherita wore her blonde hair up, complementing her almond-shaped eyes and earnest face. Despite being long-necked and long-limbed, she slouched, perhaps to disguise the fact she was taller and more graceful than her lump of a husband.

Margherita was Umberto’s queen by title, his first cousin by birth, and, by means of a joyless arrangement, his wife. Two years into their sham marriage, Umberto stopped sleeping with Margherita and installed Eugenia Attendolo Bolognini, the love of his life, as the queen’s lady-in-waiting.

Though unloved by her husband, Margherita was adored by her people, who revered her as a model of clean living. She limited her diet to lean meats, eggs, and vegetables, finished with a taste of ice cream and black coffee — a menu believed to promote perfect digestion. Fashion magazines of the day celebrated this smart, straight-talking woman — not for her wits, but for her excellent hygiene.

In fact, Margherita’s reputation for cleanliness was almost certainly why our story places her in Naples. As the Queen of Clean, she made the perfect nemesis for the city’s resident super-villain: a bacterium called virbium cholerae.

Cholera, anyone?

Five years earlier, thanks to a population density greater than Paris and a woefully inadequate sewer system, human waste saturated the soil of Naples. Cholera — called “The Blue Death” because dehydration by diarrhea turned victims bluish-grey — killed hundreds.

Advocates of germ theory clamored to remove the infected soil and build new sewers. But on the Neapolitan equivalent of Fox News, shysters pooh-poohed the idea that invisible creatures cause cholera, and called for city leaders to “cleanse the air” by burning sulphur in the slums.

Plan B had no effect at all on vibrum cholerae, but proved a boon for land developers, who seized abandoned slums after residents fled the sulfurous fumes. Soon, the foul air of Naples reverberated with the agony of the dying and the wailing of the bereaved. The death toll climbed to 14,000.

How likely is it that King Umberto would visit the filthiest city in Italy, order home delivery of the lowliest of low cuisines, and serve these dubious pies to the cleanest of clean-living Italians?

When a city the size of Naples loses three percent of its workforce, the national economy suffers. With plans for modernizing the sewers mired down in bureaucracy, corruption, and land speculation, Naples needed more than urban renewal. “The Home of Brimstone and Blue Death” needed a PR campaign.

Flint Water: If it’s good enough for the President, it’s good enough for you.

Might the story of the queen’s pizza feast have been the 19th century equivalent of Barak Obama visiting Flint, Michigan? Could the letter touting the queen’s approval of Esposito’s tri-color pie be the Neopolitan equivalent of 21st centry photos of the President guzzling a glass of lead-laced river water?

As satisfying as this cynical spin on the story might be, both it and the tour guide’s tale hinge on the same piece of evidence: the letter displayed in the Pizzeria Brandi.

Royal records, so meticulous they do capture Raffaele Esposito’s application for a liquor license, don’t mention the King summoning the same man to bring the queen a pie. The seal on the letter is in the wrong place; worse, it is unlike any seal ever used by the royal house. The letter, attributed to Camillio Galli, whose distinctive script graces hundreds of court documents, is not in his handwriting. And palace records show Queen Margherita was in Rome, not Naples, on this specific date in 1889.

Given these issues — and the fact that the first known reference to the letter appears in print almost twenty years later —the letter is very likely a fake. The story of the first pizza buffet has less to do with national pride and politics than it does with early 20th century viral marketing.

]]>https://markmcelroy.com/2019/01/07/pie-life-part-one/feed/6Red Moonhttps://markmcelroy.com/2018/12/15/reading-red-moon/
https://markmcelroy.com/2018/12/15/reading-red-moon/#respondSat, 15 Dec 2018 12:56:26 +0000https://markmcelroy.com/?p=10000257One of the components of a complete story is an emotionally satisfying ending. Red Moon, written by one of my favorite authors, delivers a compelling narrative, memorable characters, and the obsessively detailed personal and planetary landscapes expected from a Kim Stanley Robinson novel. Unfortunately, the abrupt ending — as swift and unexpected as a meteorite strike — leaves the characters and the reader in limbo.

I’m a Big KSR Fan

I’ve read just about every word published by KSR. I started with Red Mars, went on a spirit journey with Shaman, explored the corridors of Aurora, and still tear up a bit over Galileo’s Dream. Apart from the preachy Science in the Capitol trilogy (which feels ghost-written by a lesser writer), KSR’s work blends thickly detailed prose with sociological, economic, and political themes to create compelling stories set in worlds that feel more realistic than present-day earth.

Your Cheapest Ticket to the Moon

So I plowed through Red Moon at breakneck speed. I started reading the book while on a flight from Chicago to Atlanta, and the entire two-hour flight collapsed into what felt like minutes. Over the next two days, I read pages before breakfast and while walking to work and back. I read chapters between appointments. I turned down lunch invitations in order to spend more time with Fred Fredericks (the hapless American technician framed for a political assassination), travel reporter and feng shui expert Ta Shu, and fiery revolutionary figurehead Chan Qi.

And just as New York 2140 feels like an archeological, ecological, and political travel guide to a future Manhattan, Red Moon immerses you in the bleak topography of the moon itself. By the time you finish this book, you’ve been there. I’ve climbed into a spacesuit, bunny-hopped the pock-marked landscape, and stared in wonder at the startling blue crescent of Earth, rising above Luna’s bleak and brutal landscape. Until Virgin Galactic starts selling tickets, reading this book is the closest you’re likely to come to visiting the moon yourself.

The Bad News

And then, after 464 pages of spy-thriller hijinks and inter-planetary pursuits, the book slams to a halt. The airlock door slams shut. The novel’s life support shuts down without warning. One minute, we’re humming along as quickly as a magnetically-levitated orbital launcher; the next, we’re left with a hint (but no assurance) that the story will be continued. Someday. Somewhere. Maybe.

There’s wisdom in the old show business saying, “Leave ‘em wanting more,” but successful storytelling hinges on offering the audience an emotionally satisfying resolution … and that resolution, despite all the hooks and delightful complications and savvy political commentary in Red Moon, is simply not here. Like the characters themselves, we’re left suspended in space … adrift … with a possible conclusion in sight, but no guarantee of getting there.

Will I read the next book in this series? Absolutely. Will I always feel a little cheated by this one? Absolutely.

Highlights and Quotes

#new vocabulary

adhocitecture: “For sure a lot of man-hours had been devoted to this project. It’s architectural style straddled 1960’s Brutalism and sheer adhocitecture; in other words, not that different from most o the infrastructure back in China, where the glamorous skyscrapers were few and far between.”

agnotologist: “I want to be an agnotologist,” he said to Qi. “I want to study what we don’t know.”

#aesthetics

“The sublime, in a certain strain of Western aesthetics, is said to be a fusion of beauty and terror.”

#philosophy

“And I must remember, if I can, that really we are always in a spacesuit of one sort or another. We just don’t usually se it so clearly.”

“Practice is the only criterion of truth.”

#metaphor

“Construction cranes poked the gray night sky like giant gallows built to hang any surviving remnants of Nature.”

#politics

(On America’s so-called two-party system): “Your parties are just factions. That’s why people in your country are so angry. They can see it’s just one party, and one-party states are always corrupt.”

“But now it appeared that everywhere in the world governments were suffering a crisis of representation. Possibly this was because it was all one system, which one could call global capitalism with national characteristics, each variation around the Earth marked by the remaining vestiges of an earlier nation system, but still making together one larger global thing: capitalism.”

“If democracy came to China, they would end up electing idiots, as in America.”

“He had sometimes felt that Winston Churchill’s description of democracy was equally suitable as a description of the Party’s rule in China: the worst possible system, except for all the rest.”

“Food, water, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education: these all need to be adequate for everyone alive, before anything else good can happen.”

#economics

“Capital accumulation without capitalism doesn’t have many opportunities for reinvestment … Money needs to be spent to become wealth.”

]]>https://markmcelroy.com/2018/12/15/reading-red-moon/feed/0Who You Callin’ Fascist?https://markmcelroy.com/2018/12/05/who-you-callin-fascist/
https://markmcelroy.com/2018/12/05/who-you-callin-fascist/#respondWed, 05 Dec 2018 12:40:46 +0000https://markmcelroy.com/?p=10000234Sometimes, I amuse myself by writing about complex subjects using a very simple vocabulary. Here’s one of those experiments: using simple words (of mostly one syllable) to define a word we hear all too often these days.

I’m at lunch with a friend (we’ll call him Bill), who says, “We should do what the President says and not ask why. That will make America great.”

A man at the next table says, “You’re being a fascist!”

Bill turns red, throws down his fork, and yells, “I’m not a fascist! You want to know what makes someone a fascist? When you call someone a fascist! That’s fascist!”

So what is fascism?

We hear the word fascist a lot these days. But what does fascism mean? Nazis come to mind, of course — but what must someone do or say in order to be a fascist? That should not be hard to find out … but it is, because not all fascists agree on what fascism means.

First, let’s look at the word fascism. In your mind’s eye, see this: tall sticks, tied into a tight, thick bundle. You could break one stick with ease. But when you tie many sticks together, the sticks are hard to break. That’s the idea at the heart of fascism: “Many, bound together, are stronger than one.” (In fact, the word fascism comes from words that mean “a bunch of sticks.”)

That doesn’t sound too bad, does it? At work, we say ideas thought up by many people are better than ideas thought up by just one person. We even say, “We’re better together.” And any man or woman who wins a vote does so by getting many (the voters) to come together and be stronger than the one (the loser).

Fascism, though, sees the “many” as the country, led by one all-powerful leader … and the “one” as you or me. As long as you do what the head of the country says to do, you’re good. But if you want to do or say something the head of the country doesn’t like, you’re bad. In fact, you’re very, very bad … and for the good of the country, you must change and be like everyone else … or never be seen or heard from any more, by anyone, ever again.

Here’s an early definition.

The first fascist, Benito Mussolini, said it well:

“Everything in the state.” The head of the country knows best and has all power, and you should do what he or she says.

“Nothing outside the state.” Growth is the goal. A good country grows to rule the world. In the end, everyone, everywhere should be a part of it.

“Nothing against the state.” You don’t say bad things about the country, its head, its rules, its laws, or its plans. You fall in line, have faith, and keep your mouth shut.

So, if you use the word fascist this way, a fascist is a person who wants the head of the country to have all power, the growth of the country to take over the world, and the people of the country to speak and act as the leader says.

But this is what fascism looks like when it is full grown. No country becomes fascist in one day. Small steps, over time, lead to fascism. So what are the steps?

Here’s Paxton’s “Road to Hell.”

Robert Paxton wrote a book — some would say he wrote “the” book — on fascism. Looking back, he found what he says are five steps a country goes through on the way to fascism.

A group of angry people come together. They say things like, “This country is in trouble” or “This country is no longer great!” They blame all the trouble on people who think grown ups should be able to do pretty much what they want to do, as long as no one gets hurt. They may also blame people who make art, or who write books, or report the news, or who teach in school. They say these people make the country weak, and that they must be stopped at any cost.

This angry group runs for office. They ask for votes, saying, “We must stop these people from making our country weak! In fact, these people are so bad, we need to keep them out, shut them up, put them in jail, or send them away. You might even want to hurt them a little. In fact, if you do hurt them a little, that’s fine. If you agree, vote for us!”

The leaders of this group win the vote. Most of the time, they win by bringing together people who want strict laws (at least for others), who go to church often (or who think people should), who think change should come slowly (if at all), and who think “Things were better the way they used to be.” The fascist leaders don’t have to agree with these ideas; they just say these things to get more votes.

The new leaders use their power to change the country. Once they win, they look for a way to shut down (or end trust in) the free press. They say, “It’s okay to hurt bad people who say bad things about the country or the leader.” They point at people who come from other countries and say, “Keep them out.” They point at people who don’t look or act or talk like everyone else and say, “They don’t matter.” They say the country should stop working with other countries as a way to “put our country first.” And one day, they say, “The world is too scary for the leader to change,” and they shut down the vote.

The country falls apart. In the end, the leaders may go to war with other countries to help them “be more like us.” To make that war easier, the leaders take over all stores, shops, and businesses. They tell them what to do and what to make, and they say, “We will tell you how much money you can earn.” As the leaders go too far, the country’s money is worth less and less. As the country falls apart, a new group rises up and takes power from the old leaders (often after a war inside the country that kills or hurts a lot of people like you and me) or another country comes in and takes over (often after a war outside the country that kills a lot of people like you and me).

But let’s get back to Bill.

Remember Bill? He doesn’t like it when the press says bad things about our leader. He thinks the country should get behind our leader, and that people should stop saying bad things about what the leader does and how the leader does it.

Does that make him a fascist? Not really. At least not yet. And maybe it’s not that “Bill is a fascist” or “Bill isn’t a fascist.” Maybe it is better to think in terms of fascism as a place we can go … and to ask, “How far down the road to fascism has Bill gone?”

It’s okay to like our leader. It’s okay to say good things about that leader, and to wish that other people would do the same. It’s okay, too, to think that the press isn’t being fair … and to say so. You can say what you think. (Though it’s best to have facts to back up your words.)

But if Bill joins a group of people who say, “People are too free. The press is evil. People from outside our country are evil. People who don’t look, think, or act like me are evil. And to make our country great, we need a strong leader and strict rules we can use to toss these evil people out, lock them up, hurt them, or even kill them. By doing this, we will make our country great!” … then Bill (and our country) will be going down the road to fascism.

PS: Calling someone a fascist doesn’t make you (or them) a fascist. When you call someone a fascist, you are either right (if that person is saying or doing fascist things) or wrong (if that person isn’t) — nothing more.

Illustration by Mark McElroy, based on a photo by Pixabay user Couleur

The Bullet Journal Method teaches a low friction, low-tech process for capturing ideas, recording obligations, and organizing work. The bigger promise of the book is this: by identifying what matters most, you can align your daily activities with meaningful goals, focus less on mere productivity, and achieve more things that really matter.

For years, I tracked personal and professional tasks in an app called Things. It was an effective system. I had to abandon it, though, once I began working with a team, because we needed a system that could coordinate and track the activities of everyone involved.

Our team settled on a service called Asana. It’s fine for complex project and workflow management, but strikes me as too chilly and sterile to be a home for my personal e!orts. So, for months, I’ve been struggling on and o! with various systems with mixed results. The best option I’ve found so far: a handwritten journaling system I’ve been keeping in a notebook app called GoodNotes.

For the past week, I’ve integrated Bullet Journal principles into that process — with great success. Regular indexing of content, notes composed exclusively of short bullet points, carrying incomplete to-do items over to new lists by hand … all of these practices have dramatically improved my (admittedly haphazard) original system. So far, so good.

The core content of the book is a distillation of material on Ryder Carrol’s blog, and there’s good supplementary material on his YouTube channel. As powerful as the central ideas are, the book can feel a little padded at times, perhaps in order to reach the publisher’s minimum word count for a trade paperback.

If you’re struggling with organization — or direction — The Bullet Journal Methodis a fine place to start.

Highlights and Useful Quotes

#thesis

“The Bullet Journal method will help you accomplish more by working on less. It helps you identify and focus on what is meaningful by stripping away what is meaningless … The Bullet Journal is designed to be your ‘source of truth.’”

#time #energy

“Our two most valuable resources in life: our time and our energy.” “We want to be working on the fewest number of things possible.”

#strategicthinking

“You can engage your curiosity by asking yourself questions to spark your imagination. What do i want to do? Why do I want to do it? What small thing can I do right now to get started? … What exactly didn’t work? Why did it not work? What small thing can I improve next time?”

Plan/Do/Check/Act cycle

#mindfulness

“Mindfulness is the process of waking up to see what’s right in front of us.”

“The act of writing by hand draws our mind into the present moment on a neurological level unlike any other capturing mechanism.”

#intentionality

“Intentionality is the power of the mind to direct itself toward that which it finds meaningful and take action toward that end.”

“Leading an intentional life is about keeping your actions aligned with your beliefs.”

“Often all it takes to live intentionally is to pause before you proceed.”

“We need to reduce the number of decisions we burden ourselves with so we can focus on what matters.”

“Intentional living is the art of making our own choices before others’ choices make us.” – Richie Norton

Room to Dream takes a unique approach to biography: each chapter written by a biographer (in this case, Kristine McKenna) is followed by a chapter written by the subject (in this case, director David Lynch). I confess that, about halfway through the book, I found myself skipping the McKenna chapters.

Every book I read teaches me something; this one reminded me that memory is a tricky beast. Friends and acquaintances of Lynch remember an event happening one way; Lynch will remember it di!erently. Lynch encounters a photograph documenting a high school kiss that he doesn’t remember … but another kiss, never photographed, proves more present, more durable, more meaningful.

Looking back at my own life, I wonder: how many of the scenes I turn over in my mind again and again — a fleeting kiss, an intimate late-night conversation with a friend, the loss of virginity, a date gone sour, a friend’s car accident, roads not taken — are more manufactured than remembered?

If you’re a writer looking for a writing app, save yourself a lot of time and energy and just get Ulysses. Ulysses is only available on iOS (iPads and iPhones) and OSX (for Macs). If you’re a Windows user, the fact that Ulysses is available exclusively on iPads, iPhones, and Macs is a compelling reason to leave Windows behind. Ulysses is, hands down, the best app for writers available on any platform.

Let Your Needs Be Your Guide

My mistake? Looking for the best writing app for writers. Now, I’m convinced the best approach is to start with a list of what you, as a writer, need from your writing software … and then find the app that best serves those needs. For example: I wanted an app that would:

let me write in plain text (or Markdown) and worry about formatting later

sync what I’ve written on one device (say, my MacBook) and make that writing available, almost instantly, on any other device I own (say, my iPhone or iPad)

provide tools suitable for working on both short and long documents

allow me to break long documents down into shorter bits that can be easily dragged and dropped into whatever order I like

track document length and words-per-day target goals
make it easy to keep my research and my writing together, in one place

organize everything I’ve written in one library (so I could quit having to root around for work I’ve done in the past)

output my writing in any of several formats

publish my work directly to a WordPress-based blog

For me, that app turned out to be Ulysses.

How I Write with Ulysses

Everything I write begins in Ulysses, from this post to the novel I’m working on. Ulysses understands that a long document (like a novel) is really a series of short documents (like scenes or chapters). Ulysses refers to these short units of text as “sheets.”

When writing, I can easily organize, reorganize, tag, group, or file away these sheets— all by just dragging and dropping. (I fell in love with this approach when I was a Scrivener user, but switched to Ulysses because it was available on all the platforms I use. By the time Scrivener for iOS finally appeared, I was too enamored of Ulysses to consider switching back.)

Smart folders o!er another organizational option, making it possible for me to pull together an instant collection of every sheet tagged “Complete” or every sheet tagged with “POV-Main Character” without actually copying or moving those sheets around. I can attach images and notes to any sheet, so applicable research can be associated with the text that references it. And when I’m ready to export the manuscript, in just a few clicks I can churn out a Word .docx, .mobi, or .pdf — or even a post directly to my WordPress site.

One App to Rule Them All

Ulysses is a fast, reliable app that houses in one library every single thing I write. It’s under active development, so it receives frequent updates and new features. And, of course, by going “all in” on one app, I save myself the time I used to spend investigating every new option out there. Now, I can focus on learning deeply about the features of Ulysses instead of dilly-dallying with every new app that comes along.

A Word about Subscriptions

The makers of Ulysses have adopted a subscription-based pricing model ($40.00 per year or $5.00 per month). I know many people hate the subscription model, as they would prefer to buy an app once, for a big fat lump sum, and use it until it is so antiquated it no longer runs on modern hardware.

But the harsh truth is this: these days, the subscription model is the only model that allows app developers to support and sustain an app. This approach is here to stay. And — to be more frank than I probably should be — if you’re not willing to pay $5.00 a month (or less) for a powerful, professional, always up-to-date writing tool, you probably aren’t very serious about using that app to get writing done.

If you’re a serious writer, Ulysses is worth every penny. Go for it, watch a few YouTube videos about the best way to use it, and get back to writing.

I don’t work for or receive money or services from anyone associated with Ulysses. I’ve not received any compensation for this article — not even a free copy of the software. I spend my own money on the tools I review and endorse so I can provide you with the most objective assessments possible.